New Zealand’s Club Cricket And Lancashire League System

Taranaki Daily News, 12 November 1934, Page 11

New Zealand’s Club Cricket And Lancashire League System

FALLACIOUS REASONING IN REVIVED > ADVOCACY OF ADOPTION

SINCE he returned to New Zealand from his first season with the Wernerh Club, in the Central Lancashire Cricket League, F. T. Badcock, coach to the Otago Cricket Association, and New Zealand representative player, has been advocating the adoption of one-afternoon games for club cricket in New Zealand. Other New Zealand cricketers who have played in league cricket in Lancashire have also advocated it. I notice that W. Hunt, New South Wales player, who recently returned to Sydney from a season in the Lancashire Cricket League, preaches thd gospel of one-afternoon matches, too. It is natural for many cricket enthusiasts to believe that, these players of proved skill, who have had personal experience of the type of cricket they advocate, should, know that they are -.talking about, and that therefore their /*• opinions are worth following. But personal experience does not always give ability to analyse all the factors in the experience. It is possible that these players unconsciously gild the experience because it has been theirs and because it has been pecuniarily productive to them. * * * - As I have discussed the question of one-afternoon cricket matches several times already, I do not intend to review all the arguments pro and con in commenting on this revival of advocacy of it. My purpose at the moment is to draw attention to some factors which are not taken into account by the New Zealand and Australian players who . think that the Lancashire League form of the game can well be applied to club cricket in their own countries. However, some points which have been touched upon before in my notes on the question may be referred to briefly again, because they help to show mat even personal experience may be fallacious. # * * The main three arguments of these New Zealand and Australian players who have had a season in Lancashire league cricket are that the system of play there the game, that it makes for better competition, and that the gate-receipts at the games are immeasurably larger than those at club games in New Zealand. The last.'mentioned point is conceded immediately; there are in it, though, factors which are ignored by the advocates of

“one-afternoon” matches for New Zealand clubs. On the two other points the views of Badcock and company can scarcely be reconciled with facts. ** • *

It is claimed that the Lancashire league system makes for brighter cricket, because batsmen have to go for the runs.” It does make the professionals —one to each club—and. one or two of the better amateurs in a league side bat more briskly than would be required of them in other conditions. However, I think that we must consider the average speed and quality of the game, not alone the play of two or three men in a team. On the average the scoring in an afternoon of league cricket in Lancashire is not as high as that in an afternoon of club cricket in New Zealand, although the latter is at least half an hour shorter. I demonstrated that, on a previous occasion, by comparison of the figures for fine-weather matches in the Lancashire Cricket League and in firstgrade club cricket in Christchurch for a season. # # Badcock says that the Lancashire league system makes for a_ better competition than we have m the mam centres of New Zealand. This statement is a vague generality. Competition cricket in New Zealand is not as good as it should be, but that is because there are too many teams in each grade, not because Lancashires league system is not followed. Even at present the general . standard of play in the league teams is, if the professionals be excluded, no better than our first-grade club cricket m New Zealand; players with experience of the league games admit that. But probably Badcock’s contention refeis to excitement of competition, not to quality of play. If so, how does he escape the fact that, even with frequent declarations of innings—he admits they are frequent—the number m matches in the league which do not vield a result even on the first innings averages more than 40 per cent, of the total number of games in a season? * * * However, a very important factor which is not taken into account by these protagonists_ of Lancashires league system in cricket competitions, even when they talk about the gatereceipts at them, is the great difference in environment. They seem to forget

that they are talking about cricket competitions in densely-populated industrial areas. The geographical county of Lancashire —as distinct from the administrative county, because there are many boroughs which have their own administrations —contains oyei 5,000,000 people. Over 3,418,000 live outside of Manchester and Liverpool,and the cricket leagues referred to by Badcock and company serve the most densely populated industrial away from those two large cities. Badcock and the other players talk teams which come each from one town; the towns vary in size, but a town with as many as 120,000 inhabitants has only one team in such a league competition as Badcock has been playing in this year. * * *

County and league cricketers in Lancashire do not, by any means, represent the whole of the game m Lancashire; there are very many players., who do not care for the league type of competition, and who play club matches without any championships attached to them. But the mill-hands, miners, and other workers in the large industrial centres like to see sport which has some sort of championship tag on it, and they will attend in their thousands at a match which promises them a fight for a result, and at which they can quaff beer while they watch the play. Is it to be wondered at that the cricket-minded workers, who have been in mines or mills during the week, are sufficiently numerous to provide a. large “gate” for one cricket match in a town of anything from 40,000 to 120,000 inhabitants, and to give a spurious air of “brightness to that match? «■ * ■»

This aspect of the question could be enlarged upon, but it is, I think, sufficient to direct attention to it and allow readers to visualise for themselves the differences between a large industrial town in Lancashire, and the approach” of its workers to organised sport, on the one hand, and the conditions in a New Zealand town on the other hand. A L C